JERUSALEM — Brain surgeries taking place at a southern Israeli hospital were broadcast live on Facebook.

More than half a million viewers watched the broadcasts Tuesday from Soroka Medical Center Facebook Live. Facebook visitors have continued to watch and share the videos on the social networking site in the hours since the surgeries. [Read more…]

The transition team for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is already checking possible locations in Jerusalem for the U.S. Embassy, according to an Israeli news channel.

Channel 2 reported Monday night that officials from Israel’s Foreign Ministry had begun looking into possible sites on behalf of the Trump team. The news came hours after Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt during his show that moving the embassy was a “big priority” for Trump.

“It is something that our friend in Israel, a great friend in the Middle East, would appreciate and something that a lot of Jewish Americans have expressed their preference for,” Conway said. “It is a great move. It is an easy move to do based on how much he talked about that in the debates and in the sound bites.” [Read more…]

Two pairs of Polish Jewish siblings, who each believed their entire families died in the Holocaust, met for the first time at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

The tale started earlier this year when one of the siblings, Fania Blakay, found a testimony in the Yad Vashem database about her father. The testimony had been filled out by her father’s brother-in-law, who Blakay had been told had died. [Read more…]

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef told his congregants: “There are female pilots, all sorts of stuff. Is that the way of the Torah?! That’s not the way of the Torah.” (Photo by Yaakov Lederman/Flash90)

Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi said women should not serve in the Israeli army nor perform national service, and women who went out to wars commanded by the Torah went “to do the laundry.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef made the pronouncements Saturday night during his weekly Torah lesson, according to reports, citing the Jewish sage Radbaz.

“They didn’t wear uniforms and pants and the like, of course not. They went in modesty, in purity,” Yosef said. [Read more…]

“I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least,” Bob Dylan said about winning the Nobel Prize.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon.”

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan said in a speech read at the Nobel Prize awards presentation that he “never could have imagined” that he would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon,” Dylan wrote in the speech read Saturday night by the U.S. ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji, in Stockholm.

“I recognize that I am in very rare company, to say the least.” [Read more…]

Andrew Tobin of JTA holds Q & A with Nic Barkat on his views of a “united Jerusalem”

JERUSALEM – It’s been nearly 50 years since Israel captured eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. For the past eight years, Nir Barkat has been this city’s mayor.

On Sunday evening, six months ahead of the “united Jerusalem” jubilee, Barkat received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, where he gave the keynote speech. A staunch advocate of Israeli control over all of Jerusalem, he thanked U.S. President-elect Donald Trump for his “commitment to strengthen our city by moving the U.S. Embassy home, to Jerusalem, the united and eternal capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

Late last month, Barkat sat down with JTA in his Jerusalem office to discuss in more depth his vision for the city. Having made a fortune as a high-tech entrepreneur, he easily slipped into industry jargon, speaking of the need to increase Jerusalem’s “market share” of the hearts of Diaspora Jews. He also said that all its residents were his “children.” [Read more…]

Israel’s health minister called on the public to refrain from eating the traditional treat sufganiyot.

“I call on the public to avoid eating sufganiyot, which are rich in fats,” Yaakov Litzman of the haredi Orthodox United Torah Judaism party said Sunday during a conference to promote healthy eating, Ynet reported.

“You can find alternatives for everything nowadays and there is no need for us to fatten our children with sufaganiyot, which are not in line with the principles of health and proper nutrition.” [Read more…]

One of Germany’s largest corporations – Siemens – has financed the German publication of the memoir of a former Jewish slave laborer who worked in a Siemens factory outside Auschwitz.

Marcel Tuchman, 95, a renowned physician in New York, was in Berlin this week to mark the release of his translated autobiography, “Remember: My Stories of Survival and Beyond.” The original was published by Yad Vashem in 2010; the German edition is a Metropol publication. [Read more…]

Segments of a pre-Second World War Austrian film that foresaw the expulsion of Jews will be restored thanks to a crowd-funding campaign, after missing reels were found in a Paris flea market.

The 1924 film, Die Stadt ohne Juden, or The City Without Jews, was made by director Hans Karl Breslauer, based on a satirical novel by the Austrian Jewish writer Hugo Bettauer, published two years before. It tells an imaginary, dystopian story of politicians deciding to expel all Jews from a major metropolis – in the book, this was Vienna, but in the film, it was called “Utopia.” [Read more…]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would present to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump multiple options to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal.

“There are ways, various ways of undoing it,” Netanyahu said in an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast Sunday. “I have about five things in my mind.” He said he would not reveal the options until he speaks with Trump once he assumes office after Jan. 20. [Read more…]